The present invention is related to a deodorizing substance effective for deodorizing a bad smell such as methylmercaptan, trimethylamine, ammonia, more specifically to the aforesaid deodorizing substance which may be used for applications, for instance, in foods, feeds, sanitary goods, table luxuries, medicines and quasi-drugs.
Recently, men as well as women have increasingly been interested in eliminating a foul breath or a body smell with the increasing standard of living. Many products declaring a deodorant effect have been commercially available, such as those for preventing the foul breath or the body smell, for example, candies or chewing gum for preventing the foul breath, and those for removing a smell of, for example, insoles. In addition, the need to deodorant goods has spread among people of a wide range of ages and, therefore, their market has expanded year by year. Further, many deodorizing substances have been commercially available to be used for improving environments, for example, in rooms, in cars, in refrigerators, in toilet rooms, in house of domestic animals, in fish tanks or in factories, or for eliminating bad smells generated from domestic wastes or industrial wastes.
As a mean or a mechanism for preventing the generation of unpleasant smells or for eliminating generated unpleasant smells, there has been known sensuous deodorization (a method for masking the unpleasant smells with aromatic substances such as perfume); physical deodorization (a method for diluting or eliminating the unpleasant smells by, for example, adsorbing them onto active carbon, including them in cyclodextrin, ventilation or diffusion); chemical deodorization (a method for deodorizing the unpleasant smells by chemical reactions such as neutralization, addition, condensation or oxidation); and biological deodorization (a method for preventing the generation of the unpleasant smells by killing bacteria to prevent putrefaction). Deodorizing agents according to the aforesaid deodorizing mechanisms have been developed.
Among the deodorizing substances, those used in the field of foods are required to be safe for a human body when eaten or drunk. To this end, researches on deodorizing substances have centered on those derived from plants which have been used for foods. For example, the following substances are said to be effective for deodorization: extracts of green tea (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-60-185558/1985), extracts of red beet, cacao, coffee and parsley (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-60-207664/1985), Perilla extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-60-214726/1985), persimmon extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-61-87562/1986), butterbur extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-61-206448/1986), seaweed extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-62-152463/1987), finely divided Ganoderma, xe2x80x9cMannentakexe2x80x9d (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-62-181048/1987), Angelica acutiloba (Umbelliferae) extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-5-317397/1993), tannin fractions of tea leaf extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-2-284997/1990), Umbelliferae extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-6-190027/1994), mugwort extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-7-33636/1995) and mushroom extracts (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-2-277456/1990 and Hei-5-38358/1993).
In addition to the aforesaid substances, the following substances are known as deodorizing substances usable in the field of foods: dimethylaminosulfonate, glucosamine (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-48-23946/1973), cyclodextrin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-55-122700/1980), organic acids such as L-ascorbic acid, benzoic acid, gluconic acid, foric acid and nicotinic acid and salts thereof (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho-60-136506/1985).
The aforesaid deodorizing substances which are said to have high safety have a problem that they have a taste such as a bitter taste, a strong odor or a peculiar color. Because those substances have the possibility to influence a taste, flavor or color of the food when used as a deodorizing substance in an effective amount, types of food to which they can be applied are limited. Moreover, some substances have problems such as narrow selectivity in a deodorizing effect to bad smell substances or a weak deodorizing effect. Otherwise, the deodorizing substances derived from natural origins have the following problems: because their raw materials themselves are expensive, or their extraction cost is high, the products are generally expensive and, therefore, prices of the foods or medicines to which they are applied are higher. In addition, some substances have problems in their quality such as safety or preservative quality when used in foods.
A purpose of the invention is to provide a deodorizing substance which is inexpensive, have high safety and may be used widely in the fields of foods and environmental protection.
The present invention provides a deodorizing substance obtained by treating a raw material selected from sugar cane juice and sugar cane-derived molasses by column chromatography, characterized in that the substance is a fraction obtained by passing the aforesaid raw material through a column packed with a synthetic adsorbent as a fixed carrier and eluting ingredients adsorbed on said synthetic adsorbent with a solvent selected from water, methanol, ethanol and a mixture thereof.